Costumes and set design by Rachel Garcia, assisted by Marjorie Potiron and Julia Stadelmann Performed by Pauline Curnier Jardin, Simon Fravéga d’Amore, Hélène Iratchet, Mikey Mahar, Viviana Moin and Claire Vailler Choreography and direction by Pauline Curnier Jardin in collaboration with the performers and Rachel Garcia Music composed and performed by Claire Vailler
Tracks: “Le légume mésopotamien” by Mocke, and “Red Sex” by Vessel Narrator’s text Pauline Curnier Jardin, Gunter von Hagens, and extracts of “The Prose of the World” by Michel Foucault

The Resurrection Plot

2015
Performance, 65 min

Via a series of singing tableaux vivants drawn from a wealth of historic and anachronistic sources as diverse as witchcraft, voguing, and the animal kingdom, the artist plays across sixteenth century pageantries. The performance pays tribute to Renaissance dark sides and “misfits,” among them painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, ceramicist Bernard Palissy, and writer François Rabelais, all known for the overgrown and carnivalesque saturation of natural elements in their work. With her way of juxtaposing incongruous elements—where regenerative animals such as lizards and cicadas meet allegories of planets—Curnier Jardin creates an eccentric “Gesamtkunstwerk” that reconsiders the Renaissance from a subversive perspective, challenging the figure of the “Renaissance White Man” and its conquering hubris, and plays with the invention of a body mutation during the Renaissance.

Produced by Performa in association with Lafayette Anticipation – Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Paris. Supported by PSM Gallery, Berlin, Amy and Ronald Guttman, the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, Institut Français à Paris, and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S and Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin. World premiere presented in New York at Pioneer Works as part of Performa 15, Nov 2015.

Curated by Charles Aubin.

Exhibition views of Performa 15, Pioneer works, New York, US, 4-6 November 2015, photos: © Paula Court, courtesy of Performa.